Gentrification of hacking is by those studying, reporting, historicizing,
philosophizing, theorizing, aestheticing, curating (spit) it. As with
gentrification in general, it reifies the reification, a deft academic
opportunism, one might be so vulgar as to say the very product of
nettime and every growing crowd of cohorts. Amazon-ian in intent.
Gentrifiers dare not hack, but do inveigle their way into hacker havens,
publish about hackers, testify against hackers, consult with governments
about hackers, speechify hackerdom at security fora, advise film and
media about hackers, produce hacker-derived aesthetic objects, even
advise crude and obnoxious hackers about advancing careers as
hacker, ex-hacker, hacker informer, undercover cop, covert agent
academic with hacker cred, and if all goes well sign on to distinguished
institutions, cybersecurity corporations, and duplicitous NGOs like
In-tel-Q where PhDs are taxidermied for showboating at DefCons
and CCCs, then on to global appearances via speaker bureaus
and paid conferences,
Gentrifiers are allegeric to jail themselves but do exploit the few
hackers who get nabbed through the assistance provided to
law enforcement by gentrifiers, not least by celebrifying hackers
so that officials are induced to go after them for budget enhancement.
So goes gentrification in all its vile piggish manifestations. Behold the
origin of the term to cloak, deceive, defuse dissent, advance the
interests of property holders. White hat hacker cartels are making
a killling policing gentrification cyber real estate.
At 02:58 PM 8/16/2015, you wrote:

Thanks Biella,
You're much more of an expert on this than I am, so it's good to see
this. My main objective was to stir up debate a bit to keep people on
their toes, rather than necessarily believing in the 'death of the
hacker'. A lot of my writing has an ambiguous relationship to factual
reality, or I often deliberately mix together descriptive accounts of
things with normative accounts of things I'd like to see, and
sometimes they blend into one... well, perhaps this is a way of saying
that I am less an academic than I am a shit-stirrer, and sometimes I
will make things cruder than they actually are in order to push a
political agenda. I want the politicization to continue, and pointing
out the forces against politicization is one way I do that. Hope this
makes sense